Similarity solutions for pressure-driven boiling flows in capillary porousmedia

A similarity transformation has been proposed to study the two-phase bounda ry layer equations derived by Wang and Beckermann for capillary porous medi a. By virtue of the present transformation, the set of governing equations and boundary conditions for the pressure-driven boiling flow over a body of arbitrary shape reduces to the one for the flow over a flat plate. The dry out heat fluxes for pressure-driven boiling flows over a plate, a wedge, a cone, a sphere and a horizontal circular cylinder are correlated with the f luid thermophysical properties and porous medium parameters. The study conf irms that the capillary force plays an important role in boiling flows in p orous media, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.